When I become elderly, I’m going to be one of the top elderly people around. That’s because I’ve carefully plotted out which hobbies and behaviors I’m going to adopt, what clothes I’m going to wear, and even what crazy unintelligible things I’m going to mutter. When most people become elderly, they don’t have any kind of game plan. They’ve spent decades preparing for retirement financially, but they’re incapable of assuming a proper elderly disposition. I’m going to avoid this trap by adhering to a very specific chronology:

Age 66: It’s time to start bird watching. If I so much as think I hear a tweet, I’m going to drop what I’m doing and find the corresponding bird, and then I’m going to stand around watching him until dark. I’ll even have a little notebook to keep track of the birds I’ve seen, a list which is going to become gradually more improbable as I descend into senility. I will claim to have spotted extremely rare birds, then birds which are extinct, then fictional species from my favorite movies, then some dinosaurs, and then finally varieties of birds which exist only in my imagination.

Age 70: On my 70th birthday, I’m going to take up bridge in a big way. It’s a complex game, but what the other elderly people around me won’t realize is that I’ll have been secretly reading up on bridge since I was like 40. I’m going to waltz over to the card table and me and my partner are going to absolutely demolish everyone while employing an insane amount of trash talk.

Age 78: You won’t believe how ornate my cane is going to be. It’ll be bejeweled, obviously, and shaped like a dragon’s head at the handle. But where my cane will really stand out will be its rosewood body, which is going to be carved with amazing battle scenes and secret messages and other cryptic flourishes. There’s also going to be a switchblade that flips out from the bottom which I’ll use to stab my detractors.

Age 82: Now it’s time to begin openly cheating at bridge. Actually, I’m going to begin cheating at everything, including board games, bocce ball, dominos, and even jigsaw puzzles. The best elderly people have elements of connivery in their personalties, because to the elderly, everything is a matter of life and death. Young people don’t understand that society’s unspoken rules don’t apply to elderly people, and neither do traffic ordinances or public intoxication laws.

Age 87: I will officially make the switch from giving out candy on Halloween to giving out handfuls of pennies. Some elderly people make the mistake of giving out pennies when they’re 84 or 85, but I think that’s a bit early. At 87, it’s impossible for others to question this sort of bizarre, erratic behavior.

Age 93: As my mobility becomes limited, I’m going to begin collecting postage stamps—massive shitloads of stamps, probably the biggest collection of all time. What’s ironic is that although the stamp is a symbol of communication, I’m going to have begun secluding myself in the attic of my house (which will be filled to the ceiling with garbage). The binoculars from my bird watching days are now going to be used to spy on my neighbors, who will have begun circulating mythical legends about my personal history—legends I’ve been secretly disseminating over the years. Gradually I will become a pariah, spoken of only in hushed tones, feared by children and adults alike—gradually I will become one of the greatest elderly people of all time.

It pleases me when babies are compared to scientists, in the sense that they’re constantly performing little baby “experiments” with the world around them. For example, when a baby drops his rattle, the idea is that he’s merely testing how objects fall in conjunction with gravity. I enjoy this ridiculous image of a baby in a lab coat and a little baby clipboard—as if babies actually knew what the fuck they were doing and weren’t just randomly throwing shit around for their own maniacal amusement.

Babies aren’t scientists near as much as they are clowns—miniature clowns who delight in spitting up their food and falling face-first off their highchairs in a comedic fashion. Maybe babies learn indirectly from these juvenile antics, but I object to the notion that there’s any logic behind their behaviors. Try handing a baby an interesting object such as a battery, for example, and he won’t so much as glance at it. The only things he’ll try to do is either throw it across the room, preferably at your head, or he’ll attempt to swallow it and end up killing himself. This isn’t “science,” it’s just reckless tomfoolery. Their mindset is, what have we got to lose? It’s not like babies are culpable for anything. That’s probably the first and only thing a baby actually learns—that he basically has carte blanche to do whatever he wants in the supposed name of “science.” I can see right through that act, and it’s pathetic. Babies need to start growing up.

It’s said that the average adult needs 8 glasses of water a day. If you tied me to a chair for 24 hours and put 8 glasses of water in front of me, I’m maybe getting through 2 or 3 glasses before I become bored. Even if the only thing you fed me was saltine crackers, I simply couldn’t imbibe 8 glasses of water. The idea that the average adult needs so much water is the ravings of a fabulist.

Let’s not forget that “average adult” implies that some jackasses are actually going around drinking like 11 or 12 glasses per day. I’d just love to meet somebody who has the time to sit around drinking such an insane quantity of water. Maybe this figure is meant to include the water that’s in our food, but I wouldn’t intake 8 glasses worth of water on an all-watermelon diet. I’m not convinced I go through 8 glasses of water even when you include the water I use for showering. I don’t even think I own 8 different glasses.

When somebody tells me the average adult needs 8 glasses per water a day, I don’t have time to argue. I just respond with my own made up anecdote. I say, “The average adult writes like 20 poems per day.” Anybody can make up stupid facts. “The average adult eats a shitload of kitty litter every weekend.”

The Q-tip package claims it’s dangerous to use Q-tips to clean your ears, but I think that’s crazy. Maybe it’s my rebellious nature, but I use them to clean my ears practically all the time. Sometimes I actually like to jam Q-tips all the way inside my ear canals and mop up cerebrospinal fluid. What do I care? I don’t need to be mothered by Unilever Corp. or by anyone else in the toiletry industry.

I’m not even sure what else you could do with a Q-tip other than scoop out nasty ear wax. I suppose I’ve occasionally used them to clean out my Nintendo cartridges, but that’s probably also violating some sort of Q-tip provision. “Please do not clean your NES cartridges with Q-tips. Doing so might result in a dangerous NES adventure. Please refrain from receiving any utility whatsoever from our product.”